ABOUT THE ARCHIVE
These pages provide an in-depth digital look at the history of Pine Mountain Settlement School through access to original archival records. Located in Harlan County, Kentucky, the School was founded in 1913 by Katherine Pettit, Ethel de Long [Zande], William Creech and the surrounding Pine Mountain Community. The School’s on-site archive now comprises one-hundred-ten (110) years of institutional history and is one of the largest archives of the rural settlement school movement. The rural movement came later than the urban movement on which it is based, and it has not attracted the attention paid its urban counterpart. It deserves more attention. Currently, over 2,200 digital pages of local, regional, national, and biographical materials have been made accessible in the Pine Mountain Settlement School online archive.
The Pine Mountain Settlement School collection of digitized material includes biographies, family histories, administrative and governance documents, photographs (1900s – present), book collections, descriptions of arts and crafts, film and video holdings, oral histories, and a myriad of other interests. These interests are outlined in the ARCHIVE INDEX. The materials in the virtual archive detail the rural Settlement Movement through the lens of the earlier and inclusive national movement. The unique individuals and the discreet collections within the Pine Moutain Settlement School archive capture the unique essence of the rural settlement movement. Biographies provide deeply personal points of view that resonate across geographies and bring new insights into the ongoing debates of “Insiders” and “Outsiders.”
The large and growing digital body of primary documents explores the administration, staffing, community relations, cultural differences, regional environmental and social conflicts, rules and regulations, civic responsibility, and so much more. The primary material captures the social and cultural life of the rural settlement school and its surrounding community. “Remote” — a term so often associated with the rural, takes on a very different meaning in the mix of people, ideas, and educational values that pased through the Pine Mountain Settlement School across time.
Remote corners of Harlan County, and the surrounding Central Appalachian communities in Eastern Kentucky, are also found reflected in the Settlement ethos in the Southern Appalachians. Rural communities such as those found in rural North Carolina and rural East Tennessee, and rural West Virginia, are often bundled into “Appalachia”. Large urban communities such as those found in Louisville, Knoxville, Cincinnati, Asheville, and the Tri-Cities, often draw sharp distinctions to the “rural.”. The archival collections from the School’s beginnings in 1913 to the present day hold both rural and urban viewpoints. The collections provide a broad investigative field for families, scholars, students, genealogists, and other researchers looking to untangle some of our inherited contemporary questions.
Most documents are available in FULL TEXT & IMAGE. The current online archive of over 2,200 indexed pages is well supplied with approximately 40,000 images of photographs and text images.
Work is ongoing. Any for profit use of archival material requires permission from the Pine Mountain Settlement School. Please see USE AGREEMENTS below for details.
To access the Archive go to INDEX TO SERIES AND GUIDES or to the FULL INDEX TO COLLECTIONS
Alternatively, you can utilize the search box located below to look up specific topics.
OUR VISION FOR THE PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ARCHIVE
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archive is to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in individual relationships with the cultures of the Appalachian region. By providing easy access to a unique and extensive body of archival material about the region, the Pine Mountain Settlement School offers an opportunity for in-depth exploration of one of the earliest rural settlement schools within the Appalachian region. The Rural Settlement School Movement as described in the Kentucky Educational Television program, well-describes the essence of the movement. The impact on the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a story that is still un-folding. It is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood and described. By providing this online archival access we envision a deep, vibrant, and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools within the Appalachian milieu. We envision broader dissemination of educational research materials across all public, private, and federal sectors interested in Appalachian cultures and lives. more …
OUR ARCHIVAL MISSION
The Pine Mountain Settlement School archival mission supports and draws from the institutional mission of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its strategic planning goals. The Pine Mountain Settlement School mission continues its long 113-year history focused on educational and social enrichment programs centered on the local community but serving the broader Appalachian region and beyond. Once a boarding school with a progressive educational curriculum, Pine Mountain Settlement School’s recent educational programming has moved away from residential education to multi-faceted offerings of short-term environmental, cultural, medical, social, agricultural, and arts and crafts workshops and programs for all ages. Yet, the archive has not moved away from, nor will it move away from, a commitment to Pine Mountain as place and people. more …
THINKING OF VISITING PINE MOUNTAIN?
To learn more about the School’s current workshops, community interaction, annual events, and other activities, go to PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE. There, you will find information about visiting the campus, and about lodging, programs, and donating to the School.
ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
WHAT’S NEW! Archive of Promoted Pages and Posts – Current and former previews of pages and posts.
WHAT’S NEW Latest Digital Additions – Lists of pages that have been recently updated or newly published on the PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL COLLECTIONS website.
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2020-2021
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2022
ARCHIVE Latest Digital Additions 2023
COMMENTS and CONTACT
Comments and feedback directly on the website are not enabled. Users may contact the editors through Pine Mountain Settlement School. For questions and for comments related to the site please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571. We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record. If you hold material related to Pine Mountain Settlement School and wish to DONATE materials to the School, please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 to discuss the DONOR AGREEMENT.
PRIVACY POLICY
Please read OUR PRIVACY POLICY and contact our office if you believe we have violated your rights to privacy in our online archival resources.
ARCHIVE Mission Statement (extended)
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Many of the texts included in this site have been automatically generated using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. In some cases, these texts have not been manually reviewed or corrected.
OCR enables the searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original publication and its condition at the time of creation. Publications with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple-column layouts, or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.
PUBLIC USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE Non-Commercial
COMMERCIAL USE OF MATERIAL FROM THIS ARCHIVE
CITATION OF MATERIALS:
Any PUBLIC use of material must properly cite Pine Mountain Settlement School in the following manner: “[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. [date], Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. [date accessed]
STATEMENT REGARDING PRIVACY
The manuscript collections and archival records in the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections may contain sensitive and/or confidential information derived from historical archives that may be protected under federal and state right-to-privacy laws and regulations. Researchers who wish to publish and users who may share material from the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections are advised by this notice that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in some collections within the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. may be a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy if facts concerning an individual’s private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person for which Pine Mountain Settlement School assumes no responsibility.
If you believe that your privacy rights have been invaded please notify the following: office@
AGAIN, see: INDEX TO COLLECTIONS for an overview of collections and series.
TO COMPLETE A FULL ONLINE WEB SEARCH: